Remember when…? – Locked in

When we are kids, we often get in various situations because of our curiosity, or lack of experience. Some of those situations can be funny, sad, scary or just strange, but they always stick in our memory.

I was not a child that got into too much trouble, but i was curious and lack of experience got me in the following odd situation. Read on.

At the hairdresser

When i was young, my mom used to go to the hairdresser on a regular basis for a cut and coloring. I don’t remember how often it was but i remember that she went often (at least it was often in my head). Once in a while, she would bring me.

Nice place to play

I am not sure exactly what i was doing while my mom was being attended to. Was there a little area for me to play? Was i chatting with the ladies working there? Maybe. I was a chatterbox back then. Maybe they just gave me a pen and paper and it would keep me busy long enough. I don’t remember. I might have been 4 or 5 years old.

I need to pee

Once day, as i was at the hairdresser, i needed to go to the bathroom. So i asked where it was. It must have been the first time i used their bathroom since i had to ask where it was. That bathroom was a single area with a door, not like larger bathrooms with several stalls.

Oops!

As i closed the door behind me, i noticed a locking mechanism. Something to push i think, so i locked the door. I felt like i was a big girl! So once i was done, i tried to open the door, but i could not. I examined the handle, and the button was pushed in, and i could not pull it out. Hum… i was stuck there. How do the grownups get to open the door when the button is inside?

Help!

Although i was usually able to figure things out on my own, this lock totally stumped me, so what could i do? I yelled for help. I guess there was no key to unlock from the outside so they tried to tell me how to open it: “Turn the handle”. But i was trying, and it would NOT turn. “Turn harder” I don’t remember how long it took but i still have the feeling of “I can’t turn that handle” for a long time. Finally, i grabbed the handle more tightly and turned HARDER, and it opened. You can guess that it was the first time i came in contact with a handle of that type! And yes, i remembered for the next time!

How about you? Did you ever get stuck in a place with no apparent way out? Or no way in? Locked out of the car? Stuck in an elevator? Tell us in the comments below, and remember to write down your stories. I saw you smile at my story. What memory did it trigger?

Sadly, I was an adult when I got trapped in the bathroom. I think there is just something about bathrooms, period….no wonder horror and mystery movies often trap people in one as part of their plot line.

One last story: As a child, I loved taking long baths (this was before water conservation was such an issue), and I would often fall asleep while soaking. At one time, I had an orange kitten who followed me everywhere. Well, she followed me into the bathroom and got trapped there because I fell asleep in the tub with the door closed. She did the most practical thing….she decided to take a nap on my head. Did this wake me? No, but eventually the water cooled off, I stirred and realized I had acquired a vibrating hat while I slept.

Getting stuck or being locked in is not nice, particularly when things are happening around you like in Dianne’s case. I have a memory of being in a bathroom and not being able to get out but it wasn’t because I was locked in. When I was 11 my eldest sister got married and their first home was a basement flat in Blackheath, London. The rooms were laid out along a fairly long passageway, with the toilet at the opposite end to the sitting room. I went to the toilet, and just as I was about to leave I noticed a big, black, hairy spider crawling towards me, between me and the door! In those days I only had one reaction to spiders – I screamed my head off. My father ran from the sitting room, slid along the lino to stop himself at the toilet, pushed the door open to see what was wrong …. and guess what? The act of pushing the door had also pushed the spider away and I was perfectly able to walk out. I don’t think my sister ever forgave me for the big slide marks that remained in her passage the whole time they lived in the flat!

Oh, I can imagine that was a scary thing. I don’t mind small spiders but the big ones are a little off putting–especially one marching toward you! Bathrooms seem to be particularly good places to get stuck in, don’t they?

“Did you ever get stuck in a place with no apparent way out?” Oh, yes. I went with a friend to go to a housewarming in a condo complex. The layout was such that the guest bathroom was right behind the front door in a very short corridor. So my friend and I were meandering around when I decided to use the bathroom facilities. We were almost ready to leave so I told her I’d meet her outside when I was done. I had just finished my business when I heard a loud crash, like two cars ramming into each other. I decided to check out what had happened, since the sound seemed to come right outside the window (which I couldn’t see out of), but I couldn’t open the bathroom door. When the other attendees heard the car crash, they opened the front door and stood crowded in that small entryway. I couldn’t open the bathroom door because it was jammed by the front door which was held in place by the people standing there, and they were all making too much noise to hear me. Meanwhile, my friend was looking for me because she suddenly had this vision that I had wandered out in front of traffic as I looked for her. She was having trouble getting out because of the traffic jam in the doorway and, since she couldn’t see me, and no one could say where I was, she became more convinced I was somewhere under a car. As it happens the collision included damage to a parked vehicle and the car that hit it, but no person was hurt. I got out of the bathroom, finally, because someone else wanted to use it and they closed the front door so they could get into the bathroom….they were a little surprised to have me come bouncing out.

Much later, I was trapped in a elevator during a power outage with a woman who suffered from claustrophia. That was worse than the bathroom, but not nearly as memorable for some reason.